Archive | Comedy

There’s lots to like about Theresa Rebeck’s The Way of the World just as my DC Metro Theater Arts colleague Sophia Howes points out in her review. The show is the Folger Theater’s Women’s Voices Theater Festival production. There is one particular heavenly Rebeck-created character that in her earth-bound qualities delivers a critical subversive punch […]

Now in its 21st year, the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage is the Center’s gift to everyone in the Washington area, offering live entertainment at no cost every single day. It’s also a great way to introduce kids to the wonder of theatrical events. All the shows are limited to one hour. And all the seating […]

Brimming with heart, musical numbers to elicit smiles, a unique wit, some audience sing-alongs, and moments that disrupt theatrical norms, MetroStage’s Christmas at the Old Bull and Bush is a charmer. It is lovely, lively fare for the Holidays; a figgy pudding in all its sweet glory. Written and directed by Catherine Flye, the pre-1920’s […]

If you are barely in the mood to do something Christmassy, if Tiny Tim gives you hives, and learning lessons is anathema, The SantaLand Diaries is the bracing Christmas cocktail for you. The one-man show starring Cameron Folmar and directed by Lynn Sharp Spears at Drafthouse Comedy Theater in DC is the theatrical adaptation of David […]

If you’re looking for an evening of escapist entertainment at the theater this holiday season, 1812 Productions’ twelfth installment of its perennial hit This Is The Week That Is provides the entertainment, but not the escape. As the cast notes early on, there’s no escaping the state of our country, the world, or the presidency, […]

Daniel Kitson is an acquired taste. In the premiere of his newest one-actor creation, A Short Series of Disagreements Presented Here in Chronological Order at Studio’s Metheny Theatre, Kitson’s stage persona is part monk, part Detective Robert “Bobby” Goren, as well as pieces of Sherlock Holmes when Dr. Watson is not around to soften […]

I was healed. Aches and pains of the day disappeared. Headaches from paying too close attention to Presidential tweets vanished. I might have been saved too. Not sure of that just yet. Will have to wait and see. How were these things possible for an older Jewish guy, a member of the original Chosen People […]

Philadelphia sketch-comedy icon, and longest-running annual act in the history of the Fringe, The WaitStaff marks its seventeenth year of participation with an all-new Labor of Love. Directed by the delightfully outrageous Eric Singel and featuring thirteen original skits performed by the hysterically impudent Jim Boyle, Sara Carano, Joanne Cunningham, Gerre Garrett, and Chris McGovern, […]

There’s virtually nothing a drag queen won’t say, or do, in public or private, say the Kinsey Sicks. The San Francisco-based beauty shop quartet that puts the show into show business, the bawdy into bodacious and the pique in political humor, returns to Theater J with its new and surprisingly sobering Things You Shouldn’t Say. And, […]

They’re back! Second City–the group that made Chicago the capital of comedy and that all but invented improv–has returned to DC, where it is part of The Kennedy Center’s month-long second annual District of Comedy Festival. The show, billed as The Second City’s Almost Accurate Guide to America: Divided We Stand, is neither as sharp […]

Perfect Arrangement by Topher Payne was a smash hit at Source Festival when it debuted there four years ago, and the comedy’s return to Source on the occasion of the festival’s tenth anniversary is cause for celebration. Set in 1950 during the so-called Lavender Scare—when persecution of homosexuals and other “deviants” had U.S. state sanction—Perfect […]

Racism, presumed in polite circles to be no laughing matter, gets a hilariously smart deconstruction in Lydia R. Diamond’s Smart People. Arena Stage has given this 2016 play its DC premiere in a nifty production pointedly directed by Seema Sueko that makes Diamond’s every zinger zing and stinger sting. And scarcely a racist presumption goes […]

As play titles go, Or, is one of the most ungoogleable. It is a search engine dead end. And as an original mashup of past and present, prose and poetry, and performative purposes, Liz Duffy Adams’s Or, is also one of the most unpeggable. My colleague David Siegel, in his rave review, called the production […]

Nearly everyone in the arts has taken another job such as waiter, receptionist, or office temp just to pay the rent. Brad Zimmerman has an unfortunately typical problem: He’s Jewish and his parents have very special expectations of him. He MUST be a doctor. Or at worst a dentist. Or at VERY worst, a lawyer. […]

Iconic television host, celebrated comedian and 2014 Mark Twain recipient Jay Leno returned to the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall Friday night amped to get the trifecta of St. Patrick’s Day, March Madness and the weekend’s start off with non-stop laughs. Following a spirited 20-minute, three-song set by The Mellow Tones, an eight-member ensemble (Rio Castaneda, […]

Near the end of each year, Philadelphia’s only surreal theater, The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium (IRC) —with their deeply philosophical mission statement, “We Bring Good Nothingness to Life”—offers a benefit performance for the next season opener. However, the recent presidential election threw the cast and the directors for a loop as they had to rewrite the […]

There’s this hot little night club right across from some swanky automobile dealerships in a neighborhood calling itself Pike & Rose. The venue hosts a wide variety of arts and entertainment and makes for an incredibly enjoyable and affordable night out in the suburbs of greater DC. At this venue, I watched seasoned professionals Bo […]